Honestly, I'm done.
That's what I tell myself every time I see another school breaking NCAA rules and getting a slap on the wrist for it. I tell myself that college football is ruined, that the cheating and the lies and the crooks have defiled it to its very core. I turn away in disgust and invest myself further in the NFL, hardly a role model of a league itself. You know I used to let my friend tell me that college sports were better because they had a "college atmosphere" and weren't a bunch of spoiled rich guys playing a game and taking away the love of the game, like the pro sports were. I DO NOT know why I ever listened to him try and tell me that. Of course, all the wonderful offenses that have come up in the past few years by such schools as USC, West Virginia, Ohio State and now Miami weren't public knowledge back then. Nowadays we are finding more and more things that were continuously swept under the rug and covered up for years, and they ave pushed college football to the breaking point. When my favorite college team, Indiana, was caught cheating in the Kelvin Sampson scandal, he would rag on me non-stop about it. I had no better defense, so I relied on the simple and entirely unproveable phrase "every college team is cheating somehow, Indiana just got caught". I used to say that to end the conversation, but now I'm starting to see that statement was right on the money. A large portion of the biggest college teams in the country have all taken their turn on the hot seat, as they rack up more and more violations. Its starting to make my head spin, and every new violation makes me love college football a little less.
However, I think there could be a light at the end of the tunnel here. Miami has done a great job in volunteering to be the guinea pig for the NCAA's new no nonsense approach to discipline. I think there is no question that Miami should receive the death penalty, the vaunted punishment that has only been used five times in NCAA history. It would completely shut down Miami's football program for a year, giving them a huge financial loss, as well as nationwide prestige loss and embarrassment. My reasoning is that if the NCAA makes a harsh example out of "the U", other big schools would definitely think twice about allowing or facilitating NCAA violations. I don't know how many honest schools there are out there. I'd like to extend the benefit of the doubt to any school who doesn't have a record of cheating already, but I'm not so sure If I can these days. If the smaller schools are trying to compete with the big schools, and the big programs are all cheating to get ahead, that puts the small schools at a distinct disadvantage, unless they cheat as well.
At this point, I still enjoy college football. I believe alot of people still do, but at the current rate these schools are tarnishing the game, fans won't stay for long. This game is a broken, abused thing. It is having alot of trouble cleaning up its act and returning to its old ways. I just hope the NCAA changes something fast, before me and other fans finally give up on college football and start tuning in to the CFL.
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